Beats, Rhymes, & Life: A Tribe Called Quest

1. Keyes points out that rap music derives from what she refers to as the “West African bardic tradition.” What is this tradition? What is the role of the griot in this tradition? What parallels do you see between the groit and a hip hop MC (the rapper, often the main writer of lyrics for a group)?

In 1993, Ishmael Beah along with his brother Junior and their friend Talloi experienced a new kind of music called "Rap". These young kids loved the expression of rap and hip hop and the culture behind it. Since it wasn't very popular in Sudan.They had organized a rap group when he was just eight and had been rapping together ever since. They had first seen that kind of music on television and met every other weekend to study it. They didn’t even know for a long time what it was called, but were impressed with the fact that black fellows knew how to speak English really fast and to the beat. Later on, Junior had gone to secondary school where other boys had taught him more about foreign music and dance. This is how they came to know about hip-hop.

The article "How Hip-Hip Failed Black America, Pt. I & III" By QuestLove, is an informational set of articles explaining what hip-hop is and a brief background of how it came to be. Quest love is a DJ and Percussionist, I found this out from one of my friends who was curious as to what I was reading and by using the hyperlink of quest love included.

1. Using documents from the Reconstruction Chapter of RAP, discuss some of the ways in which African-Americans were segregated in the South after 1883. What was (where) the major goal(s) of segregation in the South, based upon your analysis of the text?

Hip Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes is a documentary created and produced by Bryon Hurt. The documentary challenges the dominant discourses of hyper masculinity and the misogynist treatment of women in commercialized rap. Of the many mainstream phenomenons that are discussed by Bryon in the documentary, the issue of hyper masculinity in Hip Hop is questioned greatly. Throughout the film, the producer was able to show the wide acceptance of hyper masculinity not only in Hip Hop but also American culture as well. He defined America as a hyper masculine and hyper violent nation for the reason that using a gun to defend one’s family became a metaphor for masculinity and a tool for widespread violence. The issue of issue of hyper masculinity can be

Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, Byron Hurt examined the troubling aspects of hip hop music. Hip hop was said to have brought masculinity back to the game. One aspect of this troubling masculine culture is the idea of hyper masculinity. The term hyper masculinity is defined as the exaggeration of male stereotypical behavior, such as an emphasis on physical strength, aggression, and sexuality. These three attributes create the disturbing facets of what hip hop music portrays to the media and the public.

Like any other style of music, hip hop has roots. Even though many artists contributed to the style of hip hop, Clive Campbell, “DJ Kool Herc,” is the founding father of it. Kool Herc originally started hip hop about six years before the term “hip hop” entered the popular vocabulary. WHBI’s radio show host “Mr. Magic,” was the first to play hip hop anywhere (Ogg 85). Hip Hop, like Rock n Roll before it, is not only a genre of music, but also a complex system of ideas, values and concepts that reflect newly emerging and ever-changing creative correlative expressive mechanisms including but not limited to song, poetry, film, and fashion (Hip 1). Hip Hop includes a wide variety of music originating from Blacks and Hispanic as it was used to express

Hip-Hop is a complex cultural movement formed during the early 1970s by African Americans in the slums of South Bronx, New York (Dyson 6), it propagated outside of the African American community in late 1980s, and by the opening of the 21th century it became the most spread culture in the world. Hip-Hop consists of four elements: Deejay, Break-Dancing, Rapping, and Graffiti. (Kenon 112)

Hip-hop has been a part of African-American culture since it’s inception. Amir “Questlove” Thompson’s memoir Mo’ Meta Blues, co-written by Ben Greenman, shows the evolution of hip-hop from it’s early beginnings through 2013, as well as tells the story of one of the genre’s best musicians childhood in Philadelphia. Quest love grew up in Philadelphia and was raised by his father, a doo-wop singer, and mother, a singer/dancer who also ran a clothing store. From an early age Questlove was exposed to music, but only the music his parents wanted to hear. Questlove even tells of how he had to hide Prince albums in his drums set so his parents wouldn’t take him

Hip-Hop is a cultural movement that emerged from the dilapidated South Bronx, New York in the early 1970’s. The area’s mostly African American and Puerto Rican residents originated this uniquely American musical genre and culture that over the past four decades has developed into a global sensation impacting the formation of youth culture around the world. The South Bronx was a whirlpool of political, social, and economic upheaval in the years leading up to the inception of Hip-Hop. The early part of the 1970’s found many African American and Hispanic communities desperately seeking relief from the poverty, drug, and crime epidemics engulfing the gang dominated neighborhoods. Hip-Hop proved to be successful as both a creative outlet for

Hip-hop’s claims to authenticity take a variety of forms in a multitude of contexts; therefore, it is virtually impossible to clearly define what

In the early 70's, a Jamaican, DJ known as Kool Herc attempted to combine his Jamaican style of disk jockey, that involved reciting improvised rhymes over the dub versions of his reggae records (Davey 1). He also invented turntables, which kept the music going, with the occasional voice on the top of records, which started the roots of rap music. Over time, the culture broke into mainstream, spread around the world, and young people who did not have much to do, created not only multi-million industry, but have also created a way we can speak to each other all around the world. Hip hop is linked to other music such as rap which is embraced by urban black population. It is raw self-expression, sometimes features expletive lyrics, and violence. “Hip hop artists spoke to despair and pain of urban youth and the poor who were often without a voice. The rappers themselves were, the product of that reality, and it was conveyed through their lyrics” (Muhammad 1).

Hip-hop was strongly geared towards the black community in the beginning, and was a way for artist to speak up about the problems that impacted the community. That’s exactly what Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five did in 1982, when they released “The Message”. Many artist had songs that hinted at political statements, but most were swept under the rug. However, when “The Message” came out “it was poppy, but slowed down just enough that it was impossible to hear the song without really listening…”. The song was added to the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress. The National Recording Registry is “a collection of sound recordings that are culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and /or inform or reflect life in the United States.” Rolling Stone also picked “The Message” as the best hip-hop song of all time. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five gave new opportunities to artist like Public Enemy and Chuck D, who may have not become famous if this song had not been a success. “Rap changed with “The Message””

“Rap is poetry” (xii). To any avid fan of the genre, it is a statement that seems obvious. The words could easily be the musings of a listener first introduced to the art form, not the focal point of an entire work of contemporary criticism. Yet in Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop, Adam Bradley’s primary focus is this very point, the recognition of traditional poetic elements within rap music. With the global cultural and economic phenomenon that hip hop has become, it is easy to forget that the style of music is barely thirty years old, that scholarly criticism of it has existed for only half of that time. When viewed within this relatively new arena of scholarship, the importance of Bradley’s text is

Hip-Hop was founded by African Americans and within their culture Spoken Word highlights the importance of oral storytelling. As described by professor and music writer Robert Cataliotti, "these oral traditions serve not merely as pieces of history; rather they have provided a way of remembering, a way of enduring, a way of mourning, a way of celebrating, a way of protesting and subverting, and, ultimately, a way of triumphing." From trying to trace the history of this genre I came to the conclusion that it is important to know that this art form has deeper roots, and that those who take part are continuing a much older cultural practice. Even though Spoken Word is very often characterized as a new, underground artistic movement, it's imperative to know that Spoken Word has been around for as long as language has. It is one of the oldest artistic practices that we have. The griot, the storyteller, the person responsible for orally passing down information from generation to generation: every culture on earth has some kind of equivalent to